29 June 2006 3:30 PM

Gordon Brown's support for Britain's nuclear weapons is interesting for one reason. When it mattered, and the Soviet Union's enormous conventional forces sat in Germany menacing Western Europe, Labour was against Britain's nuclear weapons. I don't recall Mr Brown standing up against CND back in the late 1970s and 1980s. I do remember the general consensus. I was howled down by fellow members of Hampstead Labour Party for supporting Polaris.

The point of our nuclear bombs was this. That the knowledge that they even might be used neutralised the effect of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, now forgotten, but probably the biggest assembly of military force in human history. America's bombs were a less reliable guarantee. Would the USA really have sacrificed Chicago, Boston or Miami for the sake of Frankfurt or Munich? It is hard to say.

Had Britain and France not possessed nuclear bombs, every Western European government would have found it wise and necessary to make political, diplomatic and economic concessions to Moscow.

But because our weapons did exist, it was unimaginable that those troops would ever be ordered to advance, or that such an advance could be realistically threatened by the Kremlin. Such an order might have led to the devastation of the Soviet heartland, an outcome no Russian leader would have been prepared to contemplate.

Interestingly, Russia has become an oil and gas power, rather than just a nuclear power - and the only defence against that is your own oil and gas fields. That power, unlike the old Soviet Army, can be used, and was recently used against Ukraine. Look how many European countries are increasingly muting their criticism of the growing Russian autocracy, as they would have done back in the Cold War without British and French nuclear weapons.

Back in those days, I would never have contemplated abandoning Polaris. Now, I can see arguments at least for changing the nature of our nuclear arsenal. But Mr Brown? He seems to have had the whole thing backwards.

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28 June 2006 2:51 PM

Some members of the Women's Institute want to ban the word ‘housewife’, claiming that it portrays an image of women being chained to the kitchen sink. Well, I would like a moratorium on the stupid phrase "chained to the kitchen sink". What a miserable vision of a full-time mother's life this phrase gives. Is there nothing in these people's homes except a sink?

The wife and mother in the home has the most responsible job in our society, the raising of the next generation. The amount that she can do, by her own actions and example, by reading, playing, encouraging, protecting and comforting, is enormous. Alone of all the people in charge of young children, she has no interest in bribing or indulging the child for the sake of peace. She can and will actually say 'no' where a paid 'carer' would say yes.

Perhaps above all she can protect the growing mind from the slurry of TV programmes and computer games, which the abandoned young of motherless homes are subjected to, with disastrous results. What an amazing generation we are, endlessly fussing about what is safe to put into our children's stomachs, while paying no attention to what we allow others to put into their brains.

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The person who accused me of 'distant admiration' for Anthony Blair now claims this was a joke. How unimprovably witty and trenchant. How I was supposed to know, I'm not sure. Text has no tone of voice from which you can detect intended irony. Best steer clear of anything but the most blatant sarcasm, and even then it's often worth putting (only kidding) in brackets.

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A few weeks from now, the GCSE and A level results (and their Scottish equivalents) will once again demonstrate that the schools of Britain have never been so wonderful, and that the young have never been so well-informed and well-educated; or alternatively, that public examinations have now been so debauched that they are more or less worthless.

This used to be the choice, though in my view it didn't take much intelligence, or experience of modern Britain, to know which was the true version.

Now there is no choice, as reputable, unarguable research by Durham University has established that A level grades have been subject to severe inflation during the past 30 years. Similar changes were noted in GCSE or equivalent grades. Yet this momentous news, effectively ending a long national debate, has been relegated to inside pages of newspapers and, if the BBC have mentioned it I haven't heard them do so.

Just so you know, Durham's Robert Coe compared the results of 200,000 students since 1988. This was possible because since that time Durham has given entrants its own unchanging tests of mathematical and verbal reasoning. He found, for instance, that candidates awarded a Grade F in Maths A level in 1988 would have gained a C grade in 2005. Students of average ability got E grades in geography and Biology and Ds in English Literature, History and French. In 2005, students of the same ability were awarded C grades in all these subjects.

As always, the interesting question is not whether schools have got worse. Of course they have. The interesting question is, why do the authorities want to pretend otherwise?

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We already have a Bill of Rights. And, as the recent fascinating judgement on the Metric Martyrs case showed, it has a special status among Acts of Parliament, so that where it conflicts with lesser laws, it is generally given priority. The main trouble with it is that so few people have heard of it, or know what it says, that it is fast becoming a dead letter.

In fact, our existing laws already give us, in theory, far more protection against arbitrary state power than the people of almost any other nation. Only the US Bill of Rights (modelled on ours) is superior.

Both these documents were drawn up by weather-beaten old cynics, who had seen what tyrants could do and wanted to stop them doing it again. They were the only sort of rights worth having - ones which placed firm limits on the power of the state. And even they have problems, as we shall see.

Vague, pious screeds like the European Convention on Human Rights or its little brother, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - or the post-Apartheid South African constitution - are virtually worthless by comparison. One ‘right’ will turn out to be 'balanced' or 'limited' by another, so that there is no absolute right to anything. The ECHR's 'right to life' for instance, bans the execution of murderers but does not protect the aborted young or the euthanised old.

Reasons of state can cancel out almost any of these rights if governments think they can get away with this, on the pretext of 'security or 'fighting organised crime’. There's an equal threat from the opposite direction. Imaginative liberal judges - and gosh, these people can be imaginative - can interpret even the clearest-seeming words to mean things they plainly don't mean.

Whatever you think of abortion (an interesting test of many of these documents), the ludicrous arguments used by the US Supreme Court to legalise it are laughable. Likewise, whatever you think of the death penalty, the idea that the founding fathers of the USA had imagined execution was a 'cruel and unusual punishment' was nonsense.

Intelligent leftists back in the 1960s realised that they had no hope of succeeding in mainstream electoral politics. So they went into the law instead, and legislated by putting daft interpretations on rights and charters. When American friends object to Britain's unelected House of Lords, I tease them by saying that the USA has a far more powerful unelected legislative chamber, the Supreme Court.

Independent juries, a free press, a genuinely adversarial parliament including at least one chamber immune from Downing Street blackmail, an independent judiciary immune from government meddling, and a tradition among the people of firmly resisting tyranny - these are the real guarantees of liberty under the law If we don't value these things in our hearts, then they are so much parchment mouldering in an archive.

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27 June 2006 2:19 PM

The "interview" of David Cameron by Jonathan Ross on the BBC last Friday was nothing of the kind. It was a ritual humiliation.

Mr Cameron must have known this before he took part, unless he is both far more stupid, and far more badly advised than I think is the case. The political content of the exchange was dim, dull and unrevealing.

Mr Ross didn't even use his supposed street credibility to press Mr Cameron on the unsolved mystery of his true attitude to drugs. Instead he tried to trap him into a public declaration of support for drug legalisation. Patience, Mr Ross, patience. The Useless Tories will come round to this before long. Just don't rush them. How could the encounter have been otherwise than half-witted and uninformative?

Mr Ross, despite having accepted an OBE from the poor Queen at Buckingham Palace, is so ignorant of public life that he asked Mr Cameron if Margaret Thatcher was now "Dame Thatcher".

The question itself reveals a lack of knowledge of so many things at once that it is astonishing. Some people have suggested to me that the self-consciously oafish and juvenile Mr Ross says stupid things like this to be provocative.

I don't think so. I just think he's slapdash and ill-informed. So I'm not sorry for David Cameron. He wanted to grease up to the young and fashionable, and he was warned in advance that the price would be some sort of humiliation.

He got it, and, fawningly, laughed indulgently when the blow fell. he knew that the only dignified and proper reaction - to get up and leave without a word - would only have pleased people like me, which he does not want to do.

Mr Ross, who by my guess would be as likely to vote Tory as to wear Harris Tweed in public, must have spent long happy hours devising the most elaborate and revolting ordeal for the Teenage Toff.

He must have got some sort of clearance for it too. If not, why wasn't it cut out of the transmission, as such stuff obviously ought to be? The BBC, which thought it was improper to show David Beckham throwing up, were quite happy to screen their favourite presenter's ( he is paid six million sterling a year) moronic and obscene question about self-abuse.

The monarchy has already been put through this sort of thing by politicians and advisors - rock concerts in the Palace Grounds, New Labour jargon in the Queen's Speech, leaks about Her Majesty's fictional enjoyment of soccer (this word, by the way, is entirely English in origin, as some recent know-all correspondents should have realised). And the Crown has been made to give medals and knighthoods to people such as Mr Ross. But the Queen had no choice. These things are visited on her by civil servants and ministers who can , ultimately, tell her what to do.

David Cameron had a choice. He decided to undergo ordeal by smut because he actively wants to submit to the new order. He will do anything to tell the Left that Politically Correct Britain will be safe in his hands. And he is very good at it.

The only thing that amazes me is that so many actual conservatives don't realise that this procedure is also a demonstration of contempt for them .

Like the defendant at some Stalinist or Maoist show-trial, he believes his only hope of survival is to be his party's most bitter accuser. He should read some history. After grovelling in their accusers' spittle, those who did so were invariably dragged off to the cellars anyway, and duly shot in the back of the neck.

"Mr Cameron's fate is slightly different. Much as many in the leftist elite would like Tories to 'disappear' entirely, they know they cannot achieve this. So instead they want Conservative politicians to accept that they have been wrong all these years, and to "get their minds right", or rather left.

Dave will be allowed to live for the moment, but only so long as he Loves Big Brother. The elite hope that he will eventually become so compromised by surrender that, even if he attains office, he will be incapable of doing even the most slightly conservative thing.

I also suspect that, once an election is actually in the offing, he will find the current honeymoon comes to an abrupt end. Talking up the Tories in mid-term is one thing. Doing so when it matters is another.

22 June 2006 7:37 AM

I have still not completely recovered from reading the thoughts of the ninny who suggested on this site a couple of weeks ago that I 'admired' Anthony Blair 'from a distance'.

The mind seesaws and staggers, trying to cope with the realisation that anyone could imagine such a thing to be true. What more do I have to do to demonstrate my bottomless scorn for the empty Blair creature?

I have tried to deal with the problem that some people still have, unable to believe that it is possible to criticise the Tories without being a Labour supporter, or vice versa. You'll just have to get used to the fact that I loathe them both, from the moment I wake until the moment I lay down my weary head to sleep, every day. And I loathe them both because they are more or less the same.

But despair engulfs me when people continue to believe - as one contributor does this week - that the Blair government is 'right wing' and by implication that Mr Blair has 'stolen' the Tories' clothes'. What clothes? The Tory Party gave up conservatism so long ago, that it now can't remember what it is. For heaven's sake, even Russian Marxists realise that nationalisation isn't the issue any more, something most intelligent Labour Party members grasped in the late 1950s. And political correctness, the most powerful left-wing ideology in history, has never been so strong in this country as it is under New Labour.

I have tried to deal with this absurd fantasy in two lengthy postings which you can find in the archives of this weblog. But why are left-wingers so unwilling to realise how much Mr Blair has done for them? It really is time for them to say thank you.

They campaigned for years for unrestricted mass immigration. They have got it. They campaigned for years for higher taxes. They have got them. They campaigned for hugely increased public spending and an expanded public sector. They have got those too. They campaigned for a weakened, politicised police force . They have that. In fact most of Michael Foot's 1983 manifesto has been implemented, albeit in some rather unexpected ways.

They campaigned for sexual liberation. They have it, in a greater measure than anyone could have imagined even ten years ago. And they campaigned, as they ought to remember, for an ethical, selfless foreign policy, which is what they have got in Iraq. If they don't like the nasty outcome of a nice-sounding idea, well, that's not unusual for the Left.

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21 June 2006 9:58 AM

Nothing does more to bring a holiday to an abrupt end than arrival at one of Britain's grim airports, especially the ones surrounding London. The windowless corridors with their low ceilings are like the reception halls of some vast liberal prison, which in a way they are.

But the experience is also interesting, if you are observant. For years, the passport gates have been divided between "EU Passport Holders" and "Non-EU Passport Holders". This distinction made it rather too plain that there is now no such thing as a British subject, that we do not control our borders and that former British subjects now have no more right to enter their own country than the citizens of nearly three dozen assorted countries, some of them until recently Communist dictatorships. Commonwealth citizens are even worse off.

As in all socialist paradises, only money or privilege can get you past these clogged queues. If you aren't able to get into the 'fast track', you must wait for ages while parties of retired Estonian KGB colonels are waved into the country ahead of you.

However, some public relations genius has now altered the signs to say "UK and EU passport holders", so that at least the former United Kingdom gets a mention. Of course, it makes no difference. You still have to wait behind the KGB men. In a way, it drives the message home even harder. You used to have a country. Now you don't . That passport you carry, besides being an embryo identity card, is a European Union passport, not a British one. That's why it cannot be blue any more.

By the way, when and how did the designation "UK" replace "Britain" and "British". The other day. I saw a British army officer, televised from Iraq, wearing a badge saying he belonged to something called the "UK Army". I didn't know there was such a thing.

20 June 2006 3:17 PM

Suggest, as I sometimes do, that it is a bad idea to undermine marriage through the tax and benefits system, and you will only have to wait about 45 seconds before someone accuses you of 'moral preaching'. Within ten minutes you will have been sprayed with accusations that you are 'making war on single mothers'. Argue that schools really have no business demonstrating the use of condoms to the young, and once again you will be denounced as a would-be televangelist, suspect and disreputable, with no business in our value-free national debate.

In fact. almost every conservative position is dismissed in this way. Anyone who tries to express it is portrayed as if he imagines he is holier than others, and hustled off the stage to hoots of mockery - many of them coming from what ought to be his own side.

What is far, far worse is that so many people so easily fall for this. Liberals, as it happens, preach constantly. What is sex education, but preaching for a removal of Christian moral restraints? What is modern 'drug education' but the same? What is the growing cross-party support for state-subsidised baby-farms but an attempt to compel women to prefer wageslavery to motherhood?

These views, given huge amounts of official support, money and standing, are not neutral. Sex-ed programmes implicitly deny that the young have any choice about how they behave. By not mentioning marriage in sex-ed classes ( allegedly so as not to offend the children of the unmarried) they spread the message that sex outside marriage is normal and usual. There is no need actually to denounce the married state. All you need to do is to sideline it, to assume that it is not necessary or important, and you have achieved the same end. Readily-available abortion, the distribution of contraceptives to girls without their parents' knowledge, and hand-outs of morning after pills reinforce the message. The state has taken over from parent as the judge of how children should behave. The main purpose of sex is pleasure.

In 'harm-reduction' drug programmes, the same effect is achieved. Advice is given on how to take drugs 'safely', which is of course impossible. The many individuals who will be irrevocably damaged by these substances do not know that this is their fate until it is too late. The idea that taking drugs is wrong in itself is never addressed. And, once again, by ignoring the possibility of moral self-restraint, the authors of these programmes destroy the very idea. There's no need to put out propaganda saying "take drugs " - the rock music industry does that quite effectively already. By acting as if such a choice doesn't exist, you remove it from the range of options and effectively abolish it.

Perhaps worst of all, the tax-breaks and general state support for 'child care' is a specific and targeted attempt by the state to enforce its preference - that women put their children second and the economy first.

These are all covert moral preaching, if you like, unwilling to declare openly what they are trying to achieve because official morality still disapproves of such ideas and they cannot - yet - be openly stated. Yet they are highly effective and have done a huge amount to change the moral behaviour of young Britons over the past 40 years.

Then there is the open moral preaching of the state, involving campaigns plainly based on the idea that persuasion - sometimes backed by punishment - can be effective in altering opinion , and that it is worth spending money and effort on it.

Why are some things chosen, and some not? It is hard to puzzle it out. Drunken driving, for instance, is a grave menace. It has been discouraged for decades by powerful propaganda campaigns and by severe prosecution of offenders, backed up until quite recently by a highly-visible police presence. The same could be said for the equally rational effort to persuade car drivers and passengers to wear seat belts. Even buying a TV licence, portrayed as a kind of civic duty, is thought important enough to warrant the buying of fleets of detector vans, supported by costly advertising campaigns and frequent prosecutions.

If it works for these causes - and it generally does - then why has it not been used to stop the use of dangerous drugs? Drugtaking causes as much misery as drunken driving, in its own slow way, and what's more I suspect that, once reliable instruments are found to check the state of drivers at crash-scenes, we will find out that many road accidents in modern Britain are caused by dope smokers and cocaine snorters. Nobody produces work sheets on how to drink and drive safely.

Then there's smoking, a nasty, evil-smelling and unhealthy habit which brings misery to many of those who do it. Quite reasonable, a lot of effort goes into persuading people to stop doing it. The idea that there might be such a thing as 'safe' or 'safer' smoking is heresy.

Yet other causes, which might also increase the sum of health and happiness, don't get this sort of uncompromising support. Why not? Given that all the social evidence shows that children from stable homes with two parents are more likely to do well at school, more likely to do productive work when they grow up, less likely to take to crime than those who come from fractured and fatherless homes, why doesn't the state use the sort of efforts it uses to curb smoking, to encourage marriage?

In logic, all these things are a mystery. If those who are in charge of us were consistent, or even honest, then they would see that these contradictory polices were a nonsense. But they don't, because they don't want to know. To think seriously about modern Britain is to realise that liberal solutions have failed, not just by the standards of people such as me, but on their own terms. We should have got to utopia long ago, if these ideas worked. But they don't , and they never will, which is why some of us will continue to preach against them from our pulpits, no matter how much slime we are pelted with.

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12 June 2006 2:05 PM

I am travelling this week and so not able to do a full-length blog, but here, instead of the usual posting, is an expanded question and answer explanation of some of the positions I take, which have attracted controversy.

Q. Why don't you support the Tories?

A. Two reasons. First, they are the Labour Party with one lung, having adopted most of Labour's policies on crime, education, tax, immigration and defence over the past 50 years. Those who doubt this must surely have been given pause for thought by the recent announcements of the Teenage Toffs who now run the party, on taxation (no change), the public sector (a good thing) and education (no grammar schools). Secondly, they are now so weak and decrepit that they are very unlikely to win a general election ever again. The polls are actually showing a very large defection from Labour, much of which will return when Anthony Blair is gone and the anger caused by the Iraq war has been soothed, and an astonishing number of people saying they do not intend to vote at all. The Tories remain pitifully weak in the North of England. Labour might well lose its majority in the next election, but a Tory victory is on the far side of unlikely. They are Labour's dream opposition. As long as they are Labour's main opponent, Labour can feel safe.

Q. But surely your attitude helps Labour stay in power?

A. Absolutely not. Have you noticed how the Tories barely fought the 1997 election and seemed glad to lose it? How they made the feeblest efforts in 2001 and 2005? If you want to accuse anyone of helping Labour in power, direct your attention elsewhere. The Tories, who are supposed to be our weapon against Labour, won't fight or can't fight. It's the people who keep the Useless Tories alive, by still voting for them, who keep Labour in power. I long to see Labour thrown out. In 1999, Andrew Marr, no less, called my book 'The Abolition of Britain', "The most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works". I have been, from the start, an opponent and critic of Mr Blair, even when other Conservative commentators (they know who they are) were expressing admiration for him. I warned that New Labour was a menace to liberty and to the constitution long before almost any other commentator. Labour loathe me so much, and have done so for so long, that they sought to exclude me from the press conference at which they launched their 1997 manifesto, closing the doors in my face and claiming the room was 'full' when it manifestly wasn't. Their sustained attempts to prevent me from even questioning Mr Blair at this and other election campaigns are a matter of record. No partisan journalist (which I freely admit to being) has been more dedicated to the defeat and removal of New Labour. And I think you will find that, if you ask them, they will agree.

It is precisely because of this that, after long thought, I now call for the replacement of the Tories. They have failed three times to beat New Labour, mainly because they have no special urge to get rid of a government they broadly approve of, and they also clearly haven't a clue how to do it. This is mainly because they don't really disagree with Labour about anything important any more, and also because a lot of people just can't stand the sight of them. The central philosophy of the Tories is 'office at any price', which is why they so often end up in office, but not in power. They are hopelessly divided about almost everything important, and dare not risk any bold conservative moves in case they split. The most likely result of the next election is a Lib-Lab coalition. Do we really want to waste another four years after that, watching the Tories fail yet again? Labour's one serious electoral defeat since 1997 was in the North-East, its own heartland, when a non-Tory coalition campaigned against John Prescott's plans for a regional assembly. The plan was thrown into the sea. If the Tories had led the campaign against Prescott, Prescott would have won. I think this shows that a new coalition of voters, patriotic, anti-EU, determined to return to the punishment of criminals and to strict border controls, could be created from people currently abandoned by both Tory and Labour parties. It also shows that the Tory label, especially in the North of England, is a disaster. It is no good the Tories pretending not to be the Tories. They are disliked in the North because of their actual record. It would take a generation to overcome this, always assuming the Tories survived long enough to do so.

Q. Why don't you start a new party?

A. First, I'm not a multi-billionaire with money to burn, so I can no more 'start a party' than anyone else. Second, and more important, new parties in this country have only ever succeeded by taking over from failing old parties. If we're to have a proper pro-British party, the Tory Party must be seen to be finished first. All attempts to start one before this happens will fail, as Veritas and UKIP have failed. It is easy enough to set up something called a party, with a head office, a nice name, a manifesto and the rest. But it has no real existence unless it has a large block of seats at Westminster. The only real way of achieving this is to get MPs to defect in substantial numbers from existing parties, which have split or are falling apart. Without that essential Parliamentary muscle, 'new parties' will not get broadcasting time, and they will fall victim to the faction-fighting that always overcomes small organisations where the egos are big and the stakes are small. As can be seen.

Q. It's no use voting 'None of the Above'. It won't change anything.

A. How do you know? It has never been tried. If enough people do it, it could start a landslide that could end in the real reform of this misgoverned country. Has anything else worked since 1997? The truth is that the millions of people who loathe this government have no positive voice. If the Tories win the next election (most unlikely) or improve their current dire position so much that people believe they can recover (possible) then the chances of them ever gaining a positive voice will be much reduced. The left-liberal consensus will control all three major parties, and the possibility of a new alignment in British politics will be gone, probably for good. So the accusation "It won't change anything" would be much better directed against those who insist on continuing to vote for the Tories. It is now clear from Mr Cameron's public statements and actions what sort of party they are. In fact, in the last few weeks he has done a lot to confirm my long-held view of the Tories, to people who might have doubted it until now. Last weekend he even won the approval of Geoff Mulgan, one of Anthony Blair's (and Gordon Brown's) advisers and not in any way a conservative. If they came to office, what would change? They can't even extricate themselves from the pro-Superstate European People's Party. It is unimaginable that they would seek to leave the EU - the only way to end the EU's theft of power from the British Parliament and courts. Schools would stay comprehensive (except for Eton), immigration would stay uncontrolled, crime uncurbed, tax would stay high, public sector spending too. Political Correctness (see Mr Cameron's 'A' list of preferred candidates) would rule.

Q. Why don't you stand for Parliament yourself?

A. I’d love to, but it's an illusion to think you can just stand. Entry into Parliament is controlled by the major parties, not by the voters. The parties pick the candidates from pre-selected lists in closed meetings. We then obediently vote for them, even if they are Alsatians, or nearly Alsatians. We oughtn't to, but we do. In fact, it's the very people who say "If you put up an Alsatian round here with a red/blue rosette, it would win" who then go out and vote for the Alsatian? Except on very rare occasions, such as the Martin Bell episode where opposition parties stood down in his favour, a non-party candidate will get nowhere. And while I suspect my views are held by a fair number of voters, I am quite certain that none of the major parties would let me stand in a winnable seat, and equally certain that I wouldn't want to stand in their name. So I can't stand for Parliament until the existing party system is reformed - by us, voting 'None of the Above'.

Q. Is it true you are a distant admirer of Tony Blair?

A. I have included this question because a contributor to this site accused me of this last week. It just goes to show how people can get the wrong end of the stick. If I could be propelled 93 million miles away from Mr Blair, I would still not be able to admire him. I have nothing but contempt for his government, and believe him to be an empty person without any real opinions or principles. I should have thought that in the last ten years or so, during which I have written many thousands of words abusing, mocking, attacking and generally not being very nice to this man, that this message at least would have got through to everyone. But not, sadly, to all. A useful lesson.

Q.You are often rude about Margaret Thatcher. Surely she was a great Prime Minister?

A. I just don't accept this. Mrs Thatcher, towards the end of her time in office, had realised that the vital, overarching issue in British politics is the European Union. After all, if you don't have national independence, you can't run the country, any more than you can drive a car when someone else has his hands on the steering wheel. Her Bruges speech, and her famous "No! No! No!" outburst against European Union rule are greatly to her credit. They go some way to offsetting her keen support for the Common Market in the 1975 referendum, and her acceptance of the 'Single European Act' with its grave loss of British sovereignty. These public rebellions against the Europhile Tory mainstream also led to the plot to overthrow her, masterminded by the same shadowy Tory Mafia which is now firmly back in control of the Tory Party. She also deserves credit for standing up to the Warsaw Pact and for breaking the power of the unions, though as we now know both these foes were near to collapse anyway, and the Left had other plans for exerting its power in the free countries of the world.

But she failed to fight the Left on the equally important battlefields of education, the family, morality and culture, a terrible waste of a unique and unrepeatable opportunity. She spectacularly failed to reform the BBC in a way that would benefit the country. And she had a thoroughly unconservative contempt for institutions and traditions. She was also far too presidential, and some of her actions opened the way for Labour's much greater attack on the constitution. Her economic policies were far from perfect, and did much unintended damage to British manufacturing industry. And she allowed herself to be browbeaten into joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a surrender that did not save her.